It’s Black History Month! 2020 was certainly the year of “Why weren’t we taught this in school?!?” (Helloooo! Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton!) But let’s make sure 2021 is different in that regard. And for birthworkers, we have such a great opportunity to celebrate all that black nurses, midwives and physicians have done for our profession. Truly, it would be unrecognizable without the gifts and knowledge they have imparted. Let me be clear: I’m not an expert on Black history and I don’t believe I have anything new to add that isn’t already said first and better by someone else. But I can certainly be Black History Month’s hype-girl. Hype-girl is something I’m great at.  

And although I’m about supporting #blackhistory365 (you need more than 28 days to celebrate so much greatness), let’s take advantage of the AMAZING curation of resources available this month. In a recent post Rachel Cargle wrote...

How’s your week going? Attempted insurrections aside, I’ve been gearing up for some big, positive events coming up in the next two months and want to make sure you have all the details about them!

I currently have a few live events coming up, including: 

• An AWHONN Intermediate Fetal Monitoring 2-day class in Oregon City, Oregon co-taught with Darla Maier on Friday 3/5 and Saturday 3/6. This course addresses the principles of fetal heart monitoring. It includes some lecture, and my favorite: hands-on skill station exercises about fetal heart rate auscultation, performing Leopold’s Maneuvers, and much more. Click here to check it out.
• An AWHONN Advanced Fetal Monitoring class on Zoom on Saturday 3/12. This course emphasizes the physiology of fetal-maternal oxygenation, utilizing really interesting case studies. Click here for more info.
• And 3 in-person Spinning Babies workshops taught by Kelly Dugan. Spinning Babies® reduces unnecessary cesareans with a...

EDIT: This Blog was written on Tuesday, the 5th and posted Wednesday (the 6th) morning. However, on Wednesday afternoon I felt the need to address the display of white supremacy at our capital, which if we understand the foundations and systems that we were built on, was not a surprise. Below you will find books, each in its own way, meant to help you understand this a little more. 

Now back to the regularly scheduled post :)

Coming off of a year like 2020, I feel like I’m seeing two kinds of New Year posts.  The first is along the lines of, “Rock n’roll, let’s DO THIS! Whoo! *smashes energy drink can on forehead*”.  The other is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s more, “Everyone refresh their sweatpants stock? Good, cuz we are tip-toeing real nice and easy in 2021...no sudden moves (sips tea)”.  Let me say, both of those reactions make a ton of sense.  I’m falling a little into both...

You are a good labor nurse. You care A LOT. So how do we have so many caring, hardworking, smart clinicians and still have an American maternity care system that is not making the grade?  Maybe you’ve known for a while that our maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity statistics in the US are shameful.  Certainly, you can’t have missed the fact that black women are 3-4 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women (and yes, that’s controlled for every other variable). And term infants are twice as likely to die than our European counterparts?!? Let me be abundantly clear: you have a professional duty to work for the changes we need to do better by our patients and families. Becoming an AWHONN member and taking any of my courses are good first steps. You might also want to do a little reading. These issues are complex, generational, and rooted in patriarchy and white-supremacy.  That's not a point of debate: please see...

Conferences are great. Online courses are great. This is where you can see knowledge applied, be in community or learn about something not-yet-published. Who all goes to National AWHONN? It's a major party! But I always advocate for nurses to get to the source, to learn not just what so-and-so presenter’s view is, but to have a familiarity with the texts and research where we draw from. Books are a cheap and readily available resource for nurses that want to be experts.  That want to be that nurse who is soooo goooood with all the situations.  That nurse who gets a cool nick-name, like The Vagician because of her mad skills. Practical, topic-specific books can help give perspective as well as tools, skills and knowledge.  For all the hospital training and mandatory education OB nurses get, it's rare such basic topics as physiologic birth, labor progress and trauma are covered.  And sometimes, what we need to learn and grow as a nurse, isn’t about our...

I remember being the new, inexperienced nurse.  Man, I thought I knew so much! I loved when the senior nurses would tell me stories about the things they used to do.  One story that sticks out was a nurse, Jill, telling me that to suction out a baby, they would use their MOUTHS to create the suction! And that MECONIUM would occasionally get in and need to be spit out. Blaggedy-barf-hurk-aaaaah!  I loved these stories because they made me feel a kind of horror-slash-delight.  A smugness that those days of doing ridiculous things was over (HA!). So if you, like me, love those stories, and are even finding yourself now as a senior nurse sharing the dumb shit we used to have to do, memoirs are for you.  They are a great way to broaden your awareness of different lived experiences, both of the birthworkers before us and the people we serve making their way through the maternity care system.

Here are my top 7 memoirs:

Call the Midwife by Jennifer...

What we see, we believe. What we can’t see, we don’t believe. It's a major premise of learning and socialization.  So if we only consume media--TV, movies, music, books--by those who resemble us, our view of the world can be narrowed. In another post, I gave you a New Years Resolution that is easy, rewarding and supports any other goal you might have.  Read a freaking book.  Or 2. Or 20.  Specifically, read books that will help you feel engaged and connected with the important work birthworkers of all kinds, but especially hospital OB nurses, have in front of us. A great place to start is with fiction. It might not seem like the first type of book you’d grab to become a better OB Nurse, but the fiction we choose makes a huge impact on our ability to be an empathetic nurse, caring for a diverse population.  Look at your bookshelf.  Notice the authors.  Mostly men or mostly women? Mostly American or other nationalities? Mostly white...

I’m a clinical educator and AWHONN Fetal Monitoring Instructor, a nursing school professor and a staff nurse. So between patients, students, staff and providers, education is a big part of my work. But I’ve noticed in the last several years, it doesn’t matter what that class is, as soon as they know I review legal cases and serve as an expert witness, it’s all people want to talk about! The nurses who were confident at explaining complex physiology back to me get a weird look. The voices get more hushed. Then the questions start: “Well, is it true that…?” Fill in the blank. “I heard that if you document…” Fill in the blank. Some of these are along the lines of urban legends. Many are things I myself have heard in hospital mandatory risk classes. Very rarely are any of them based in reality.

I try to remind them, just as I remind you reading this now, that the legal risk is just another way of talking about patient risk....